new-york-comic-con posts

Lately we have seen the San Diego Comic-Con become more and more interested in the game industry with new game reveals, exhibits, panels and more. The biggest rival to San Diego Comic-Con is the New York Comic Con. While it's only a few years old the pop culture convention had over 77,000 people attend in 2009.

For the 2010 edition to be held on October 8-10 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in Manhattan, there will be quite a few game publishers on the exhibit hall including 38 Studios, Activision, Capcom, EA, Gazillion, Sega, Square Enix, THQ, Ubisoft and more. Intel will also be there with not only PC game demo stations but also the US finals of its Intel Extreme Masters PC pro gaming tournament. Pro PC gamers will compete for over $60,000 in prize money playing games like Counter-Strike, Quake Live and StarCraft II. The winners will also be heading to Germany in 2011 to compete in the world finals of the tournament.

NCsoft won't be on the show floor exhibiting but it will be conducting panels at New York Comic Con. It will also hold an meet and greet between fans and its developers for City of Heroes and Guild Wars 2 at the nearby Hudson Hotel on Friday.

This past weekend the massive New York Comic Con was held and the pop culture event in Manhattan served as a place for the game industry to show off and talk about a number of upcoming titles. Our sister site Joystiq was all over the convention floor and at the panels to cover the event.

New York Comic Con is run by Reed Exhibitions and has been highly successful in its few years of existence (the first convention was held in 2006). Early estimates have pegged the 2009 show as having over 77,000 attendees. The show will be moving to an October date for its 2010 edition. However, Red Exhibitions is running the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo East event that will debut in late March 2010 in Boston. We suspect the game industry will be out in force at that inaugural show. In the meantime check out Joystiq's coverage of NY Comic Con which includes coverage of a panel with Bethesda Softworks' Todd Howard and 2K Boston's Ken Levine, some Battlefield 1943 impressions, and some impressions of Velvet Assassin.

It's been a little while since any updates have come for Velvet Assassin. The WWII stealth action game from developer Replay Studios was originally due out last fall from publisher Gamecock. They got bought out last fall by Southpeak Games and added Velvet Assassin to their list of upcoming games for release this spring.

Today Southpeak announced their official plans for this weekend's New York Comic Con, announcing that a playable version of Velvet Assassin will be among the games shown at the exhibit floor. In addition the "real" Velvet Assassin model. Melinda Cohen, will make an apperance at the show. Cohen, who also appeared at last August's Penny Arcade Expo, did the voice work and motion capture for the game's lead character Violette Summer. In the meantime Southpeak sent over four new screenshots of the game itself to look over

Southpeak Games will also be showing off other upcoming games from their line-up, including the action-fighting game X-Blades and the sci-fi shooter Section 8.

We've already mentioned that next weekend's New York Comic Con will be full of game publishers exhibiting recent and upcoming games along with game-themed panels. This week Codemasters wanted to let everyone know that the upcoming space-based MMO Jumpgate Evolution will be front and center at NY Comic Con.

Attendees will get to check out and play with the latest code version of NetDevil's upcoming title (a revamp of their first game Jumpgate) which is scheduled to launch later in 2009. Codemasters even sent over three new screenshots from the game to promote their NY Comic Con appearance and we've gladly added them to our gallery.

While not as big as the San Diego Comic Con the New York Comic Con has grown by leaps and bounds in its short history; it was launched in 2006 with about 20,000 people but by last year's edition attendance had grown to 64,000 people. The 2009 show is being held on Feb. 6-8 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City and the show will have a surprising amount of game-related panels.

Panels at the show will spotlight, among other games, Prototype, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, X-Men Origins Wolverine, Wanted, and the still mysterious 38 Studios. The Penny Arcade team will also be making appearances at the show. In addition Activision, Atari, Codemasters, Konami, Mythic Entertainment, Southpeak Games, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others will have exhibits on the show floor. All in all it's not a bad line-up of companies and activities if you are a gamer in the NYC area.